The sequel to last year’s The Maze Runner is, in many respects, a very similar enterprise. The Scorch Trials is just another highly derivative mishmash of old sci-fi and video game concepts. It’s unapologetic to the extreme, and just about everything else to the extreme as long as we’re on that subject.
But it is also, and this is incredibly important, absolutely fantastic. With this film, director Wes Ball has crafted a breathless but expertly crafted sightseeing tour of action set pieces, each one exquisitely filmed. The plot is a junior jumble of hack mysteries and largely unremarkable characters, but the experience of watching it unfold is so downright electric that you never quite give a damn.
If you missed the original, it apparently doesn’t matter. The events of The Maze Runner were apparently just an excuse to get us to the opening of The Scorch Trials, in which groups of amnesiac teenagers are brought to an isolated government facility because they are immune to a new zombie virus that has wiped out most of mankind and, somehow, apparently evaporated all the oceans in the process. But our de facto hero Thomas (Dylan O’Brien) doesn’t trust his saviors, who are led by the highly suspicious Janson (Aiden Gillen, slimy as ever), and so Thomas and his companions escape captivity into… The Scorch.
The big reveal of The Scorch, and conspiratorial build up to it, plays a lot like a video game. However, unlike movies actually based on video games, The Scorch Trials gets it right. Wes Ball films our hero’s confinement in claustrophobic sets, sends them out into the eery night, and then finally unleashes a giant world of apocalyptic vistas upon us in a sequence reminiscent of Fallout 3 and Bioshock. Ball’s film evokes those same senses of awe and wonder as those classic interactive experiences. This is how you make a modern action movie, by taking inspiration from the latest developments in pop culture storytelling and paying attention to how they actually work, not just going through the motions of their plots.
So Thomas and his gaggle of rebel types abscond from one deadly situation to the next, and the deft screenplay keeps each new event unexpected and thrilling. The same action sequence is never repeated twice, and when a similar moment does seem to be approaching, the film wisely cuts away to a different perspective. Wes Ball uses multiple planes of action to clearly convey complex information and give each stunt an exhilarating sense of scale. Overall, the production is simply an impressive achievement.
But it is only an impressive achievement in service of a story that, at the end of the day, doesn’t have much to offer. There are unexpected and intriguing motivations revealed throughout the course of The Scorch Trials but the world in which they can be found is full of silly clichés. So be it. The Scorch Trials is such an entertaining nail biter that nothing else matters. Lean forward in your seat and pay close attention, because this is pure craftsmanship.
Photo Credits: Richard Foreman, Jr. SMPSP
William Bibbiani (everyone calls him ‘Bibbs’) is Crave’s film content editor and critic. You can hear him every week on The B-Movies Podcast and watch him on the weekly YouTube series Most Craved and What the Flick. Follow his rantings on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
